Ex-Siemens Executive Sharef Settles SEC’s Bribery Suit

By Phil Milford -
Apr 19, 2013

A former manager of Siemens AG (SIE),
Europe’s largest engineering company, agreed to pay $275,000 to
settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission over a bribery scheme in Argentina.

Uriel Sharef and six other defendants allegedly paid bribes
to Argentine government officials in connection with a contract
for identity cards, the SEC said yesterday in a statement.

“Sharef met with payment intermediaries in the United
States and agreed to pay $27 million in bribes to Argentine
officials” and “enlisted subordinates to conceal the
payments” by working around internal Siemens accounting
controls, according to the statement.

Sharef consented to the judgment “without admitting or
denying” the allegations and waived the right to appeal,
according to an April 15 filing in federal court in Manhattan.

Siemens, based in Munich, pleaded guilty in 2008 to
violating U.S. anti-corruption laws and agreed to pay $1.6
billion to settle bribery probes in the U.S. and Germany.

Heiko Lesch, Sharef’s German lawyer in Bonn, declined to
comment on the settlement. Sharef’s U.S. lawyer, Richard Grime
in Washington, didn’t immediately respond to a voice-mail
message seeking comment on it.

Alexander Becker, a Siemens spokesman, declined to comment
on the settlement.

The case is U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v.
Sharef, 11-cv-09073, U.S. District Court, Southern District of
New York (Manhattan).